Kazakhstan Nuclear Weapons

The Kazakh Parliament on Monday overwhelmingly ratified the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and hours later Vice President Al Gore announced that the United States will provide $84 million to assist in the destruction of Kazakhstan's nuclear arsenal. The action by the Kazakh Supreme Soviet followed a debate between reformers and former Communists over the future of the missiles, which conservatives see as a symbol of sovereignty.

The Kazakh Parliament on Monday overwhelmingly ratified the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and hours later Vice President Al Gore announced that the United States will provide $84 million to assist in the destruction of Kazakhstan's nuclear arsenal. The action by the Kazakh Supreme Soviet followed a debate between reformers and former Communists over the future of the missiles, which conservatives see as a symbol of sovereignty.

The United States has brought more than half a ton of highly enriched uranium to this country from Kazakhstan that otherwise might have found its way to Third World countries for use in nuclear weapons, U.S. officials said Tuesday.

President Bush was told that Russia, Ukraine and Belarus had formed a new commonwealth when Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin telephoned him with the news on Sunday, and Administration officials said that the move is another step in the demise of the Soviet Union. "The Soviet Union as we've known it no longer exists," Secretary of State James A. Baker III had declared earlier Sunday, before Bush received the call from Yeltsin.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III agreed Thursday that Russia should retain part of the massive Soviet nuclear arsenal, even though most of the missiles are aimed at the United States and its allies, because a nuclear-free Russia would upset the concept of deterrence that has kept the peace for the last four decades.

By now, millions of people should have mysteriously disappeared from the face of the earth, the Soviet Union should have invaded Israel and Jesus should have descended from the heavens to usher in a real New World Order. So went the rough scenario outlined in 1970 by Christian author Hal Lindsey in his bestseller, "The Late Great Planet Earth."